


Rewrite the Stars

by MarshmarrowSans



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), (But they do play their role!), Alcohol, Also..., Anti-Monster Racism, But hold ya horses laddies we're taking this one slowww, Drinking, Drunkenness, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Ex-Genocidal Reader, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Guilt, I promise!, M/M, Other, Pining, Rating May Change, Reader Is Not Frisk, Reader does not have a defined gender, Reader keeps secrets from Sans, Sans Doesn't Remember Resets, Sans Is A Total Mom Friend, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Sub Sans, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Vomiting cw, but that only comes up later~, dom reader, emetophobia tw, reader is a badass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-06 20:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15203075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshmarrowSans/pseuds/MarshmarrowSans
Summary: You've treated the monsters in the underground like your playthings for long enough.  After what feels like a lifetime of trying this path and that, you have resolved to right your wrongs in the only way you can to atone for everything you've done: you will let the monsters go free once and for all, and you will disappear from their lives completely.  This is how your story with monsterkind ends.It's too bad that fate, and your best friend among the monsters, seem to have plans to rewrite that ending.





	1. The End.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone have the paramedics on standby. Kasha's gonna try to write a slowburn longfic. The absolute mad lad.

“thought you said you had places to be.”  
  
You didn’t have to turn to look.  You knew who that was.  You would know who it was even if you couldn’t recognize him by his distinctly baritone voice, because he was by far the one most likely to come back and check on you if you acted strangely.  And acting strangely included sitting atop the path to Mt. Ebott for hours on end after your liberation, along with the liberation of all monsterkind, from the underground.  
  
“Thought you said you had to go keep Papyrus out of trouble, or something.”  
  
“yeah.  i did.  no worries, he’s tucked into bed and everything.  the situation is under control.”  
  
You looked up at the sky, as if seeing the stars and moon overhead for the first time.  The dead of night already?  How long had you been out here?  You had long since lost your sense of time.  That was to be expected when you could, and did, reset the world at will.  You had lived within the past week for at least a matter of months.  Maybe even more than a year.  
  
What else could you do?  Move on from the underground and abandon that power?  Return to a life where you eternally only had one chance at everything?  You were too used to the ability to come back, to erase everything at will, from a simple social blunder to an experiment in reaction and the butterfly effect.  To think that killing a single Whimsun in the Ruins was enough to prevent everybody’s freedom!  Truly, the flapping of a Whimsun’s wings in the underground could cause a hurricane on the surface.  
  
Not to mention what happened when you caused an entire hurricane all on your own.  Even now, you could remember the smell and the taste of dust, and the way it choked your lungs like corpse's hands.  
  
You could remember his sorrowful, fading eye lights, and the warm, wet blood splattering and sticking on to your skin.  
  
“i gotta be honest.”  Sans groaned dramatically like an old man as he lowered himself to sit beside you on the grass.  “after everything, and knowing the kinda large-and-in-charge personality you have.  i was surprised you didn’t wanna be our ambassador to the humans.”  
  
You were silent.  Eyes fixed stubbornly on the ground.  The wind moved your hair as gently as the fingers of a loved one long forgotten.  
  
_How could I act as ambassador for the people I’ve spent the last eternity treating like my personal playthings?_  
  
“it’s a shame,” Sans continued in the absence of your response.  “you woulda’ made a really good one.”  
  
“Not as good as your brother.”  
  
“well.  of course not,” Sans conceded with a good-humored chuckle.  “but.  you were offered the role first.  he just kinda called first dibs after you turned it down.  
  
“and you had no way of knowing that was gonna happen, right?”  
  
You wanted to look at him, but you couldn’t.  You had long ago taken note of his proclivity for reading people’s expressions with uncanny precision, and you were determined not to give him an inch.  No.  He could take your avoidance of eye contact as a marker of suspicion all its own, you would gladly surrender that, so that he didn’t see the echoes of timelines long past etching sorrow into your tired eyes.  
  
“No,” you told him softly.  “Of course not.”  
  
Sans shrugged, letting the question, and your response, pass without a fuss.  But then, Sans was never much one for confrontation, even when he did know that something was going on.  Instead, he ran his hand over the grass, letting the blades slip between is phalanges, then uprooted a handful and sprinkled it on to your leg.  
  
“and then you broke an old lady’s heart.”  
  
You turned to look at him.  “Excuse me?”  
  
He blinked up at you, his expression as unreadable as ever, eternal skeletal smile plastered on his face.  “don’t act like you didn’t notice how hurt tori was when you said you had places to go.  she wanted you to stay with her.  with us.”  
  
You scoffed at that, “Sans.  I’m an adult.  I don’t need to stay with a surrogate mommy, alright?  I can live on my own.  I _have_ lived on my own.  And I will _continue_ to live on my own from now on.  It’s my element.”  
  
“geez, no need to get all defensive, pal, i get it.  if papyrus wasn’t around, i’d wanna live alone, too.  i like the peace and quiet.”  He laid out on his back next to you, arms behind his head, one leg crossed over the other.  “mmmh.  like here.”  
  
“Sans.”  
  
“yeah?”  
  
“What are you doing here.”  
  
“uh.  being free.  kinda having my mind boggled by how much there is i could possibly do up here.  takin’ in the sights while i think about it.  checkin’ on you.”  
  
“Well with all due respect…”  You pushed yourself to your feet and looked down at him, hands in your pockets.  “You probably shouldn’t have come all the way out here to check on me.  But I’m glad you did, I guess.  It’ll be nice to give you a proper goodbye before we part ways.”  
  
Sans had had both eyes closed, but he opened one to look at you now.  There was a crack in his unreadable expression.  He looked distinctly disappointed.  
  
“whaddya mean?”  
  
“What I mean… is…” you wrung your hands together and gave him your carefully-recited speech.  “I’m glad that you all are free.  And I’m glad that I was a big part of that.  I really am!  But I’m a human.  And I know other humans, and I know there’s going to be huge fallout about you guys rejoining society.  And I want you to know that you have my full support, always.  But I can’t spearhead this revolution.  And I’m too scared to be a very big part of it.”  
  
“awh…  kid—” he started to sit up.  
  
“I don’t want reassurance, what I want is to be left out of it.  I don’t want anyone to know that I was in the underground, that I had any part in freeing you, that I ever knew you at all.  Politically, it’s going to get really ugly, really fast.  And I don’t need it being broadcast to the world which side I’m on.  You know all the journalists are going to harangue me if they find out I was in the underground.  A clean slate, Sans.  That’s all I ask.”  
  
“…  so that’s it, then.  our friendship ends here.”  
  
“I hate to put it that way.  But…  yeah.  I’d say we were very good friends, Sans.  And it _does_ end here.”  
  
_How can I stay in your life after everything I’ve done to hurt you?  I don’t deserve to be a part of your life._ You could only look into his pained eyes right now and imagine a day, not so far in the future, when he was finally happy again.  _But I don’t deserve to be around to see that_ , you told yourself.  
  
_The only thing I can do to make it all up to you is to let you go._  
  
“welp.  alright.”  Sans got to his feet, too, and shoved his hands in his pockets just the same as you.  You stood across from each other now, like stiff, distorted mirror images.  “i like to stay outta things, too.  and while i kinda don’t have a choice on this issue—being a monster and all—i can respect wanting to keep your head down, even when it’s something i’m sure you care about.”  
  
Did he sound resentful or sincere when he said that?  You honestly couldn’t tell.  
  
“just wish it didn’t have to mean saying goodbye to you.  i’m gonna miss ya’.”  
  
Despite yourself, you couldn’t help but smile, growing warmth in your chest from the simple fact that he, and the other monsters, so genuinely cared for you.  That fact made it so easy, and yet so hard, to do this: to let them live on without you.  The selfish side of you didn’t want to let them go, but that side of you was completely usurped by the selfless side, which had firmly made the decision to let them live out their lives on the surface in peace.  Away from the person who had made them suffer in so many other timelines.  Yes—you were certain, this was the only way things could be fair.  
  
“I know, Sans.  I’m going to miss you, too.”  
  
“can we hug on it?”  He offered you his arms, mittened hands held questioningly to each side of his body.  “or is there too much of a risk of the paparazzi hiding in the bushes right now, waiting to snap a scandalous photo?  accuse us of being secret lovers.  out for a bit of celebratory mountainside nookie.”  
  
You were stone-faced, ready to refuse him anything, until he made you laugh.  He could always make you laugh, and that was one of the things you knew you were going to miss the most.  
  
“I think I can take that risk for you.”  You pulled him into your arms, and shared the longest, most desperate hug of your life.  How could either of you half-ass it?  It was a hug goodbye with a dear friend.  
  
Realizing that you might never see his face again, you hugged him tighter.  Cradled his skull against your chest.  Sensing your need for comfort, and maybe even needing it himself, he rubbed his hand up and down your back.  
  
“y’know.  this is gonna sound cheesier than grillby’s cheese fries.  and those things, dunno if you’ve ever had ‘em, are _smothered_ in nacho cheese sauce.  absolutely drowning.”  He only went on once he felt your chest rise and fall with a giggle of acknowledgement to his analogy, “but even though it’s only been a week, i feel like i’ve known you for a thousand years.  i dunno.  maybe i’m just grateful for all you’ve done for us.  maybe i’m in awe.  you’re the prophetic angel of the underground, standing right here in front of me, callin’ me a friend.  whatever it is, it’s making this really difficult.”  
  
“I know.  For me, too,” you reassured him softly.  You couldn’t give anything away.  Nothing.  Especially not that, after so many timelines, so many times probing his boundaries, his thoughts, his past, his greatest joys and his deepest fears, you knew him like the back of your hand.  
  
With how much you’d lost your grip on time?  Maybe you _had_ known each other for a thousand years.  
  
“Give Papyrus a hug for me, too, okay?”  
  
“mmhmm.”  
  
“And make sure he knows—make sure everyone knows not to mention me publicly.  Try not to mention me at all, if it makes things easier.  I don’t want people slipping up.  Act like I never existed.  Say Asgore and Alphys came up with a solution to break the barrier.  I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you all to iron out the details…”  
  
“alright.  ‘sthe least we can do for ya’.  i know i was a bit snippy before, but…”  
  
Ah.  So he _had_ sounded a bit resentful earlier.  It was extremely hard to tell, but you had a feeling.  
  
“…  if a life apart from us is what’s best for you, then you deserve it.”  
  
He was exactly right.  A life apart from the people you’d come to love was _exactly_ what you deserved.  That was what this was all about.  
  
“i just feel really bad for paps.  we, uh.  we were talking.  about you.”  Sans didn’t step out of your hug.  He wanted to tell you something.  “…  he wanted me to, uh.  tell you that.  maybe if you didn’t want to stay with tori.  maybe you could stay with us instead.  and he seemed really convinced that you would agree to it.  he set you up a bed.  it’s… uh…  a doggy bed.  but i thought i’d getcha a real one.  if you agreed.”  
  
You weren’t sure you’d ever wanted anything in your life more than you wanted to take his offer right then and there.  The fantasy of a life spent together with them flashed through your mind, as vivid as real memories.  You loved all of the monsters dearly, but none so much as Sans and Papyrus.  They were extremely likeable.  In time, you came to consider them your best friends.  So much of your time spent repeating these last few days had been spent exclusively with them.  You’d lost count of your play-fights with Papyrus, your trips to Grillby’s with Sans.  
  
Maybe this was your chance.  
  
Maybe you _could_ stay in their lives and still make it all up to them.  You could be together with them, always, and swear to never hurt them again, or else you would leave for good.  You could give yourself one chance to prove that you weren’t the person you had been so many times before.  
  
But the guilt came back.  Was that really friendship—resetting the timeline just to explore the branching paths of your relationship with them?  Or was it just a new way for you to play with them?  You knew that was what it was.  They were just toys to you.  You loved them like a child loves their favorite doll.  Sincere, but severely imbalanced.  
  
It was time to grow the fuck up and let them go.  
  
“I appreciate the offer…”  You put your hands on his shoulders and, gently, like a parent sending off their child, you pushed him away from you until you were looking each other in the eyes.  “But I can’t.  Tell Papyrus I’m going to miss him the most.”  
  
“heh.  he’ll appreciate that.”  
  
“But can I tell you a secret?”  
  
“shoot.”  
  
“I think I’m going to miss _you_ the most.”  
  
He averted his eyes, cheeks turning almost indiscernibly blue.  “awh, heck.  i can’t imagine why.  but hey.  whenever you miss me.  just look up hilarious puns on the internet and read ‘em aloud in a drawling brooklyn accent.  it’ll be like i never left.”  
  
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”  You pinched his cheek affectionately.  “My voice could never possibly be as deep as yours.”  
  
The moment you let go, he took a step back from you.  Hands back in his pockets.  Expression returning to that neutral, unwavering smile.  Was he sad?  Was he angry?  Was he disappointed in you?  He probably couldn’t help being a bit of all of those things, but he didn’t say a word about any single one of them.  
  
Maybe he understood a kind of love that someone manipulative like you never could.  
  
“you live a good life.”  
  
“You too.  All of you.”  
  
Sans backed away from you, like he didn’t want to turn away.  But eventually, he did.  You turned your gaze back to the magnificent view out in front of you, listening to his footsteps.  They retreated for several feet.  Slowed.  Stopped.  It was like you could feel him looking at you over his shoulder.  
  
“roommate offer’s always on the table,” his voice floated back to you.  “in case you ever change your mind.”  
  
“Goodbye, Sans.”  
  
He understood the finality in your statement.  He wouldn’t have sounded so sad if he didn’t.  “goodbye, angel.”  
  
You were surprised by the moniker, especially by its sudden use in the moment that you parted ways for good.  Was he still on that whole _angel of the underground_ thing?  You turned to ask him about it, but he was already gone.  
  
…  Well, it didn’t matter.  What did it matter what the parting words were of an old friend you were never going to see again?  
  
You’d lived a million stories with him.  Or rather the same story, rewritten a million times, sometimes beyond recognition.  
  
It was time to write _The End_ in ink and move on.


	2. Or Is It?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anger seared in your chest, fast and destructive as a bullet. You knew this would happen. You knew humans would be like this. You fucking knew it. You couldn’t just sit there. In moments, you were on your feet and marching over, a determined gleam in your eyes and in your soul.
> 
> You were never very good at sitting things out.

How foolish were you to think that you could just resume your life like nothing happened after you had been reported missing for several days?  
  
Well, you hadn’t been a fool, really.  You’d underestimated how much people cared about you.  You thought that, because you lived alone, and because you were so closed off from everyone in your personal life, nobody would really notice when you were gone.  
  
Your online friends noticed first, and asked your family to try and contact you.  When that failed, one of your friends in the area came to check on you.  They were relieved, at least, not to find your dead body in your apartment, but still horrified to find you missing without a trace.  
  
You collapsed on your bed late, late at night after your final conversation with Sans, and you were taken in for questioning early in the morning.  
  
Were you kidnapped?    
  
Is someone threatening you?  
  
Do you need to go to the hospital?  
  
Have you been harmed in any way?  
  
Have you been given any foreign substances?  
  
Do you need us to run any tests on you?  
  
You don’t have to tell us where you’ve been—we just have to be sure you’re not in any lasting danger.  
  
But the police were the least of your troubles.  Once you made it clear that nobody but yourself was involved in your disappearance, and that you were completely unharmed, they saw that it wasn’t their concern anymore and left you alone.  It was the media that made things so difficult.  You soon found out your case had been plastered all over the news.  People loved miserable stories, and missing persons cases were always a hot commodity.  People in the comments were being as nasty as ever, accusing you of running off with an older lover or something—ugh, why did you look at the comments?!  And it didn’t help that there had been a recent kidnapping and murder in your city…  The ones who weren’t theorizing a perverted runaway love story were subtly lamenting your demise with their ‘hopes and prayers.’  
  
You were tempted to anonymously type out, _I lived out of pure spite for you and your dumb theories, assholes._  
  
You also had to deal with the frenzied messages from everyone who knew you.  Hell, even people you only considered acquaintances.  There were so many, you decided to only respond to those you considered closest to you.  That included your family, a select few people you knew offline, and a few people you knew online.  
  
Mom: Don’t ever scare me like that again! (46 Unread Messages)  
  
Dad: Glad you’re back safe.  Everything ok?  Need to come home for anything? (11 Unread Messages)  
  
John: Listen if you're getting a lotta freak on right now that's cool and i respect ur choices but it helps to send a friendly notice you're alive. For the other people who are really worried. By other I mean not me. (13 Unread Messages)  
  
Nikki: I swear to god if you found Aperture Labs without me I'm gonna be so mad. Seriously though I hope you're alright please come home! (99+ Unread Messages)  
  
Amanda: If you got yourself killed I swear I’ll kill you.  (10 Unread Messages)  
  
David: PLEASE COME BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.  (24 Unread Messages)  
  
…  
  
Even with your reply-to list narrowed down, the messages still went on and on.  
  
Eesh…  you felt bad.  You could tell all of them had been very, very worried about you.  And it became apparent that you couldn’t dodge questions forever.  You had to come up with a story.  One that wouldn’t link you back to the people you were determined to leave alone with their epilogue.  
  
The story you came up with was simple and easy to keep straight.  You were feeling overwhelmed in your life—highly believable, coming from a working lab tech in the process of getting their PhD—and you went nomadic for a few days to clear your head.  You didn’t know where you’d been.  You’d been wherever.  
  
And you were as shocked as everyone else when you returned home and saw the breaking news on TV that monsters were now roaming free on the surface, asking for peace and diplomacy.  
  
Life became exceptionally strange for you with the re-integration of monsters into society, but not for the same reasons as everybody else.  For you, it was like the eternity you’d spent in the underground was all one, eons-long fever dream that you had only just awoken from.  
  
Sans certainly seemed to have kept his word.  Either that, or all the monsters you knew personally were very busy trying to make things work with human figures of authority.  Whatever the case, the monsters you knew personally made themselves scarce, and the ones you were pretty sure you only knew in passing didn’t seem to look at you any different than they would look at any other human.  The bunny from Snowdin that reached for the same bottle of amaretto as you.  One of the whimsuns from the Ruins fluttering up into a tree to hide as you passed on your morning jog.  A vegetoid that ducked into the vegetables bin at the farmer’s market so fast you almost missed it.  They all looked at you with an expression you were all too familiar with.  
  
Fear.  
  
They must have gotten the message that humans didn’t like what they perceived to be their societies being invaded.  And the thing they hated most of all was the concept of the _other._ The more different someone was from themselves, the more likely they were to resent them for asking the same things as those that weren’t _others_.  It was a concept in human history so worn out you would think they would have learned their lesson by now, but they never, ever did.  
  
How could monster rights stand a chance when humans weren’t even fully accepting of huge subsets of their own species after hundreds of years?  
  
The biggest and most immediate issue for the newly freed monsters was housing.  Leaving their homes behind in the underground, they had nowhere to go.  The lucky ones were able to find some generous humans with room to share.  Some were able to find homeless shelters who would accommodate them.  Some had no choice but to march back to Mt. Ebott and take up residency in their old homes in the underground.  You felt sad for them—every morning, they woke up just the same, as if they’d never gone free at all.  Sure, they could leave, and it beat homelessness by a wide margin.  But you’d always had this rosy image in your head of every monster waking up to sunlight streaming through their window…  
  
You were still getting used to the thought that you weren’t the main determinant of their fate anymore.  That was left up to the masses now, to the leaders of the world.  You didn’t have influence anymore.  You were no chosen one.  Nothing special.  You were powerless.  Just the same as before you fell into the underground.  And you knew in your heart that everyone was better off that way.  
  
It took several months for the monster housing initiative to show up in your town.  You saw the construction site as you drove to work every morning.  For fear of backlash, the purpose of the complex being constructed wasn’t highly publicized, but you’d sent in a (fairly large) anonymous donation to the cause when you saw it being advertised online, and in return, you were sent the blueprints and the locations of where they planned to build affordable housing for monsters.  One of those locations was at the address of that construction site you passed each day of the work week in your car.  You put two and two together.  
  
You were happy for them.  But you also hoped you wouldn’t see any familiar faces.  It was fairly easy to distance yourself from them all when you never saw them face-to-face.  In fact, you would have a hard time contacting your old friends at this point even if you wanted to.  It had been months now, they had probably all come to accept that you weren’t a part of their lives anymore, and you had long since deleted Toriel and Papyrus’ phone numbers off your phone and purged the numbers from your memory.  You didn’t know any emails or addresses, or even screen names.  
  
Although…  Sometimes you wondered.  
  
A few words here.  Short forum posts there.  Your internet presence was often intruded with subtle reminders of the ones you’d left behind.  
  
You couldn’t help but wonder if the _hawtdawg25_ , _bonezoni_ , _bigblue_ , or _meeeeeeeeeeeeeeemes69_ on your dashboard could possibly be Sans.  If Alphys could be that aesthetic blogger who mostly tweeted things involving bowls of ramen.  If Undyne was that rare fitness blogger who just so happened not to ever show off their bod—well, nevermind, maybe not _that_ one, you were pretty sure Undyne would take lots of pictures of herself flexing.  But then, in all likelihood, you knew those were all probably just random people.  You were just psyching yourself out.  You were paranoid.  You missed them too much.  
  
A lot of time had passed, but you had to admit: you weren’t forgetting them as easily as you were sure that they were forgetting you.  
  
But you could feel things returning to normal, as slowly as that went.  The fastest thing to fade was the media’s fixation on you.  Once you gave out your fabricated story, people decided it was pretty anticlimactic and quickly lost interest.  Your friends and family stopped mentioning your disappearance every time they saw you.  You fell back into your old routine.  Wake up, study, work, study some more, sleep.  That summarized your life before you fell into the underground and became extraordinary, and now, it summarized your life once more.  
  
Wake up.  Scroll through social media on your phone and get ready.  Review your research notes—presentation in two days.  Eat, drive to work.  Work, work, work.  Drive home.  Rewrite lecture notes until your hand is sore and your brain is fried.  Chat with friends online for awhile.  Sleep.  
  
Wake up.  More of the same…  
  
Wasn’t this what you’d been trying to escape?  What got you so hooked on life in the underground?  Never having to feel like a leaf being swept downstream, caught up in the ever-turning gears of a society much greater than you?  
  
You craved that kind of control again.  That kind of power.  The more you felt that, the gladder you were that you were far, far away from the monsters.  You would only hurt them again.  
  
Wake up.  
  
It was the weekend, but that didn’t usually mean much for you lately.  You buried yourself in your work, partly because of your anxiety over distancing yourself from monsterkind and partly because that had always been your way of doing things.  As a result, your history of academic and career work was outstanding.  Your social life, not so much.  That certainly didn’t help your ongoing efforts not to involve yourself with anyone who knew you from the underground.  They were amazing.  You were lonely.  
  
You missed them.  You missed them so much.  
  
You needed a break from the apartment you’d spent the greater part of the last several months all alone in.  
  
The faux-leather driver’s seat creaked and crackled under your weight as your body occupied it, and you latched the seatbelt across your body.  Even in this moment, as you started up your car, you weren’t sure where you were going today.  Just…  out.  You needed a respite from the constant grind.  Maybe you’d find a tea place.  Maybe you’d go on a hike.  Maybe you’d get smashed and dance the night away in the first nightclub you saw.  
  
It had been so long since you’d been anything other than a student and scientist, you weren’t even sure what kind of person you were anymore.  You sat there in your car with the engine running, thinking over your choices and asking yourself what you were the kind of person to do, and you couldn’t find an answer.  
  
You just started driving.  
  
But even now, you only found yourself on your way to work.  It was etched into your mind like a program.  The only reasonable direction to head.  Maybe that was unhealthy.  Still, it was kind of soothing just to be out on the road.  You looked out your window at the construction site as you passed it.  
  
The frame was coming along nicely.  Its completion was slated for the end of the year.  Like always, as you passed, you wished the workers and the future occupants the best and contemplated how life might change for you again once your local area became more populated with monsters.  
  
Like always, you thought about the possibility of seeing them again.  
  
Of seeing Sans again.  
  
You weren’t buttering him up when you told him you would miss him the most.  Something about him always captivated you, even before you found out, through trial and fatal, murderous error, the kind of power he held.  He had that kind of presence about him that always left you wanting more of him, and you couldn’t, for the life of you, put your finger on why.  He was a memelord!  An absolute king of farts!  People like that weren’t _supposed_ to have that cool, mysterious aura around him, and yet he did, like you could dive into the depths of his being and never resurface.  
  
You were intrigued by him.  Deeply, scientifically, endlessly intrigued.  He was a phenomenon you could never get to the bottom of.  
  
Maybe that was why so many of your resets and alterations in the underground had to do with him.  Maybe that was why you had, by far, poked, prodded, manipulated and tortured him the most out of anybody in the underground.  You still remembered the look on his face when you approached him in the judgement hall, smile forcing its way on to your lips, and told him that if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t have dusted Toriel and Papyrus!  And he knew he couldn’t do anything about it—you’d left everyone else untouched.  So he couldn’t lay a finger on you.  He had to watch you, the murderer of his brother and his closest friend, walk away.  
  
You wanted to see what made him tick.  You wanted to see what could erase that smile from his face.  You wanted to see him break.  Cry.  Lose his sanity.  Lose his endless composure.  Your heart still raced at the thought.  
  
You had to stop.  Take a deep breath.  Hold it, feel your heart slow.  Hands gripping the wheel until your knuckles turned white.  
  
You weren’t that person anymore.  You _weren’t_ , even if you could remember those feelings inside you so vividly they felt like they were still there.  You couldn’t let yourself feel anything but regret for all those things you did.  Sans wasn’t your plaything.  He was your friend, even now that you were apart for good.  That was why you let him go.  
  
You focused on that, intensely.  Focused on what it felt like to hug him as you said goodbye.  Your friend.  And then you thought again about everything you’d done to hurt him.  
  
It didn’t excite you.  
  
It _hurt_.  
  
Good.  That was how you were supposed to feel.  
  
You let out the breath you’d been holding.  
  
Maybe it was a little dangerous to be driving in such a distracted state, but the truth of the matter was, you’d lost track of where you were going by now.  You’d driven past your exit to go to work, so you just took the next one with the goal in mind of turning yourself around and returning to somewhere a little closer to home.  
  
You were still at a loss as to what to do with your time, and frustrated by the thoughts still cluttering your head.  Besides the minimal relaxation of driving out on mostly-empty roads, this trip out had done nothing for you at all.  And you _still_ didn’t know where you were even trying to go.  
  
Maybe you would just go back home.  
  
That was what you thought, until you spotted the peaceful little park on your way back to the highway.  
  
You weren’t sure what it was, but something about it called to you.  Maybe it was just the way it looked in the warm, dusk light, mostly abandoned except for a few sparse people.  The jogging path was empty, the playground devoid of any children at this hour, just an introspective-looking, blue-haired high school kid staring listlessly down at their cell phone as they teetered forward and back on a swing much too small for them.  A grand fountain stood in its center, surrounded by a large concrete ring for sitting on and no doubt filled with coins tossed in exchange for wishes.  
  
You had a few coins in your pocket.  And you could think of hundreds of wishes.  
  
You sat on the concrete area surrounding the fountain, one knee pulled to your chest, and held in your hand all the pennies you’d been able to find on your person or in your car.  You’d been able to come up with about twenty of them.  With each one that you tossed into the water, you whispered one of your wishes.  
  
_Splish.  
  
_ “I wish that monsters won’t have a hard time joining the world out here.  I know humans can be rotten, but…  I don’t want them to be.”  
  
_Splish.  
  
_ “I wish Papyrus won’t have too much trouble as ambassador.  It’s a better outcome than _me_ acting as their ambassador, but…  I still worry about him.  He might have to deal with a lot of backlash.”  
  
_Splish.  
  
_ “I wish that Sans will get back into science…  I can tell he really loves it, and I’m still not totally sure what’s been holding him back.  But I know it’d make him happy.”  
  
_Splish.  
  
_ “I wish Undyne and Alphys will get married.  Duh.”  
  
_Splish.  
  
_ “I just want everyone to be happy.  Wherever they are in the world.  Totally, endlessly, exceptionlessly happy.  Whatever it takes.”  You stared down at your hand.  You still had a bunch left, but…  You tossed them all into the water at once and pulled your other knee up to your chest.  
  
“That’s all,” you whispered to the ripples cascading throughout the water.  
  
You shut your eyes and felt alone in the settling cold of night.  
  
And then you heard a voice in the distance, far enough away that even at its natural loud volume, you could just barely make out a few words.  
  
“JOGGING…  GREAT…  AM!...  HELPS… POSITIVITY!”  
  
You knew that voice, though you didn’t know the voice that came after it, which belonged to exactly the kind of woman you would expect to find at your nearest convenience store demanding to see a manager.  She was facing towards you, and the wind carried her voice better.  
  
“Well you’re scaring the kids who want to play here!  My daughter is sitting in the car right now, terrified!”  
  
Anger seared in your chest, fast and destructive as a bullet.  You knew this would happen.  You knew humans would be like this.  You fucking _knew_ it.  You couldn’t just sit there.  In moments, you were on your feet and marching over, a determined gleam in your eyes and in your soul.  
  
You were never very good at sitting things out.  
  
“NYEH-HEH!  AFRAID OF A LITTLE SELF-POSITIVITY?!  WELL THEN!  I THINK THE REAL PROBLEM!  IS THAT SHE DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH CONFIDENCE IN HERSELF!  DO YOU TELL HER HOW WONDERFUL SHE IS EVERY DAY?!  IF YOU DO NOT, THEN MAYBE—”  
  
“ _Don’t_ you try and tell me how to raise my child!”  She invaded his personal space.  Pointed a finger in his face.  Forced him to take a startled step back.  As you got close enough for your eyes to focus on her face, you saw the hatred of a misguided mother bear far too quick to snap at anything she saw as a threat.  
  
And as was the case all too often, to her, monsters equaled threat.  
  
You quickened your pace.  
  
“WELL, I AM SORRY IF THAT HURT YOUR FEELINGS.  I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP!  I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS WITH HUMAN CHILDREN AND BEING SCARED OF ME.  I ALREADY STOPPED JOGGING HERE DURING THE DAY BECAUSE MANY OTHER HUMANS ALSO SAID THAT I WAS SCARING THE CHILDREN.  PERHAPS INSTEAD OF BANNING ME FROM THE AREA, YOU SHOULD LET ME TALK TO THEM AND—”  
  
“You don’t know what it is?!  I’ll TELL you what it is.”  She jabbed him in the chest with her finger.  “You’re a _monster_.”  
  
“Stop.”  Your voice entered a conversation it didn’t belong in.  But neither of them heard you—at least, neither of them answered.  
  
“I AM INDEED!  IN FACT, I HAPPEN TO BE—”  
  
“You’re _ugly_.  You’re _born violent_.  You’re _invading_ our society like cockroaches.  You’re _subhuman_.  And our kids can all tell.”  
  
“Stop!”  
  
You watched her shove him, witnessed the startled look on his face as he stumbled back and his arms shot out to either side of him to catch his balance.  
  
“THAT’S why our children are scared of you.”  
  
“STOP!”  
  
There was only one thought in your mind right now, as overpowering as anything that ever fueled your obsession with resetting:  
  
Protect Papyrus.  
  
Forgetting your own strength and fueled by adrenaline, you wedged yourself between them, put both hands on the aggressive lady’s chest, and shoved her away from your friend.  She flailed for balance much more than Papyrus had had to.  Her arms flailed in an almost comical windmill motion, and she hit the ground ass-first, like a petulant child denied a grab at the cookie jar.  You couldn’t read anything on her face but shock and disbelief as she looked up at you.  She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  
  
She couldn’t believe that out of a random, small sample of the population, anyone would come to his defense, especially so strongly.  
  
You stood your ground.  
  
“Leave him alone,” you talked down to her sternly.  
  
“…  But he was--!”  
  
“Not hurting anyone,” you interrupted her.  
  
“He’s SCARING my DAUGHTER!”  
  
“Well then maybe that’s _your_ fault for not explaining the monster situation to her correctly.”  You reached back behind you almost without thinking.  Recognizing your support, Papyrus held your hand.  “Because I don’t know if you know this, but you’re talking to the ambassador of monsterkind here.  You know what _ambassador_ means?  It means the fucker putting up with all of you fucking fucks.  And somehow still bringing himself to be NICE about it!”  
  
“WOWIE!  THAT IS EXACTLY HOW UNDYNE DESCRIBED IT!”  
  
You moved back a step, and Papyrus moved back with you.  Still, you could practically feel his beaming smile over your shoulder.  You loved that about him—it wasn’t that he didn’t _know_ he was in a precarious situation.  He just… always kept such a sense of positivity about it.  Even when he was a little scared.  
  
It must have been that part of him that possessed him to nudge past you and offer the fallen, stunned woman his hand.  
  
“NOW LET’S EVERYBODY CALM DOWN!  I AM, IN FACT, PROUD TO INTRODUCE MYSELF AS THE AMBASSADOR OF MONSTERS!  AND AS THE AMBASSADOR—”  
  
She slapped his hand away, got to her feet on her own, turned, and stormed off without a word, leaving him standing there with his hand still extended, and you standing there awkwardly behind him.  One of the monsters you’d tried to leave behind who was closest to your heart.  The one you’d just put everything on the line to defend.  
  
Despite everything that had just happened, he turned to you with the biggest smile and the sparkliest eyes.  He was shaking, hands balled up in fists and held to his chest, looking like he could burst trying to hold in how happy he was to see you.  
  
Uh oh.  
  
“…  I gotta go,” you told him abruptly, and turned to leave.  
  
But it just couldn’t be that easy for you, could it?  
  
“OH!  YES!  RIGHT!  OF COURSE!  AHEM!”  He straightened himself, one hand behind his back and the other held to his chest, super posh.  “THANK YOU VERY MUCH, KIND STRANGER WHOM I HAVE NEVER MET BEFORE!  WINK!  IT WAS VERY KIND OF YOU TO COME TO MY DEFENSE!  AND WHILE I WILL CERTAINLY **NOT** TAKE THIS AS A STATEMENT OF YOUR GENERAL POLITICAL VIEWS!  I WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW THAT I WOULD GLADLY COME TO THE AID OF A HUMAN JUST THE SAME AS YOU DID FOR ME.  THAT’S EQUALITY!”  He caught up to you—an easy task with his long legs—and shouted a whisper to you from beside you.  Your power-walking was a normal gait for him.  “HOW AM I DOING?  AS AN AMBASSADOR AND AS PRETENDING NOT TO KNOW YOU AND BE BEST FRIENDS ALREADY FROM THE UNDERGROUND?”  
  
You sighed heavily, crossing your arms over your chest, but unable to bring yourself to totally rebuff him.  “…  Great as always, man.”  
  
“NYEH-HEH!  I KNEW I WAS CUT OUT FOR THIS!”  
  
Well, that made one of you.  
  
“OH, I CAN’T WAIT TO TELL YOU EVERYTHING THAT’S BEEN HAPPENING.  WELL FIRST OF ALL I HAVE MISSED YOU VERY MUCH.  I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU COMPLETELY STOPPED TALKING AT ALL TO ALL OF US.  I MEAN, IF YOU WANTED US TO PRETEND TO HAVE MET YOU ON THE SURFACE.  WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST LET SOME TIME PASS AND THEN GET TO KNOW US WITH A PRETEND-CLEAN SLATE?  THEN WE COULD BE FRIENDS AGAIN IN NO TIME AND YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT!  AND NONE OF THAT STUFF SANS SPENT ALL WEEK EXPLAINING TO ME WOULD HAVE TO MATTER.”  
  
…  He had a point.  Your fake reasoning for removing yourself from their lives didn’t make an awful lot of sense.  And if Papyrus realized that, you were sure Sans did, too.  
  
You didn’t say anything.  You had to shake him.  So you got into your car…  
  
…  But he just opened the passenger’s side door and climbed in after you to keep talking to you.  
  
“WELL, ANYWAYS, I’M GLAD THAT NOW THAT YOU REALIZE THIS WHOLE NEVER-TALKING-TO-EACH-OTHER THING IS OVERDRAMATIC AND SILLY, WE CAN BE FRIENDS AGAIN.”  
  
“Papyrus…” you started to argue.  
  
“YES?”  
  
But when he looked at you with that big, signature, optimistic smile of his…  Damn it.  How could you look him in the eyes and tell him that you couldn’t be friends anymore?!  You would break his heart!  Wasn’t _not_ doing that the whole point of disengaging in the first place?  You had to do everything you could not to hurt them further.  That was your ultimate goal.  So you said something else.  The first thing that came to mind.  
  
“Are you mad at me?”  
  
“WHAT?  OF COURSE NOT.  I MEAN, YES, YOU ABANDONED US ALL AND KIND OF BROKE OUR HEARTS.  AND I MIGHT HAVE CRIED A LOT WHEN SANS SAID YOU WEREN’T GOING TO COME SEE ME ANYMORE.”  
  
Fuck.  Unintentionally lay on the guilt tripping as always, Papyrus.  
  
“BUT THAT WAS JUST BECAUSE IT SEEMED LIKE YOU DIDN’T CARE ANYMORE!  AND YOU PROVED TODAY THAT YOU DO!”  
  
…  Well…  Yeah.  You kind of did, didn’t you?  You were still mad at yourself for throwing yourself back into the exact situation you’d tried so hard and struggled so long to get out of.  But you didn’t regret it one bit.  You couldn’t see that scenario going any other way.  You’d helped Papyrus out, stood up to one of millions of the human bigots out there.  That was what you chose to do, here in this world where your first choice was your only one, and the one that mattered.  
  
That felt…  good.  
  
“SO ALL IS FORGIVEN.  AND NOW I WANT TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE I LAST SAW YOU!  WELL, LET’S SEE.  FIRST, ASGORE MADE ME THE AMBASSADOR OF MONSTERS…”  
  
“Yeah, Papyrus.  I was…  I was there for that part…”  
  
You let him go on and on as you drove, in between giving you directions, of course.  You had no idea where he lived now or what his house looked like, so you had to depend on him to tell you.  
  
Unsurprisingly, he had a lot to tell you.  The monster housing initiative had actually been one of his ideas!  While he and Sans were lucky enough to have easy housing up here, he told you, he saw that so many of the other monsters weren’t as lucky, and considered it one of his top priorities, because as he said, “HOW CAN THE SURFACE BE OUR HOME WITHOUT A HOUSE?”  
  
Besides being the ambassador, he’d also managed to find an unofficial job at a restaurant!  He seemed excited about that, even though all he was doing at the moment was washing dishes.  He seemed certain that if he worked hard enough—like he always did!—he would be able to work his way to the top and become the head chef and manager of the place.  You didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.  
  
He'd made a lot of new friends—even human ones!—and was blown away by how many people there were on the internet.  He was used to most of the faces online being familiar.  Now there were _billions_ of people to talk to on there!  He didn’t even know where to start, but he was trying to learn some foreign languages just so he could talk to more of them.  You couldn’t help but smile when he told you that Sans had a habit of spending hours on end browsing Wikipedia articles.  Yeah, you could see him doing that.  
  
“Hey, speaking of Sans…”  You couldn’t help but ask, “How is he?”  
  
“OH, WELL HE’S--!”  You could guess he’d been about to say ‘just the same as ever,’ but then he stopped himself and wrung his hands together.  “…  HE MISSES YOU A LOT.”  
  
You quirked an eyebrow at that, glancing at him in the mirror to gauge how sincere he was being.  “Still?”  
  
“HE DOESN’T TALK ABOUT YOU ANYMORE.  BUT THAT’S HOW IT’S BEEN SINCE HE TOLD ME TO STOP TALKING ABOUT YOU!  AND TOLD ME TO TELL ALL MY FRIENDS TO STOP TALKING ABOUT YOU.  BUT I CAN TELL THAT HE WANTS TO!”  
  
You scoffed, and repeated that disbelievingly, “You can tell.  How?”  
  
“WELL, BACK WHEN WE WERE ALL FRIENDS WITH YOU, HE’D ALWAYS GET THIS SMILE ON HIS FACE RIGHT BEFORE HE MENTIONED YOU.  SOMETIMES I STILL SEE HIM START TO SMILE LIKE THAT.  AND THEN HE DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING.  BUT I THINK HE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT YOU.”  
  
The rest of the drive to his house became strangely silent after that.  You didn’t know what to say.  You just let him blurt out directions, sometimes too late for you to actually make the turn.  
  
But eventually, you made it.  You knew when you’d made it even without him telling you, because you recognized the house.  
  
“…  Papyrus.”  
  
“YES?”  
  
“How did you get your house from Snowdin up to the surface.”  
  
“OH, THAT’S EASY!  …  SANS DID IT!”  
  
“How did he--…  you know what.  I don’t need to know.”  You waved your hand at him dismissively.  “See you later, Papyrus.”  
  
Papyrus gasped, the joyful sparkle from earlier returning to his eyes.  “SEE ME LATER?  YOU MEAN IT?  SO WE’RE FRIENDS AGAIN NOW!”  
  
Shit, shit, shit.  
  
“Um, Papyrus, I don’t know if—”  
  
“NO TAKE-BACKSIES!”  He stood by the open passenger side door and waggled his finger at you.  “NOW STAY HERE.  I HAVE TO TELL SANS EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AND BRING HIM OUT TO COME SAY HI TO YOU!”  
  
Shit, shit, shit!  
  
“Actually, um, Papyrus—”  
  
“I’ll BE RIGHT BACK!”  
  
You watched Papyrus run into the house, and you didn’t know what to do.  
  
So you muttered “fuck it,” threw the car into reverse, and went screeching out of the driveway.  You were sure Sans would understand.  
  



	3. You Can Run, But You Can't Hide!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that you were awake, you experimentally curled your fingers, then your arm. It was silly, but you always liked to take a moment and appreciate the fact that you had conscious control over your body again, after you had episodes like that.
> 
> The sound of incoming message alerts from your still-open laptop drew your attention away from your fascination with once again being able to move your limbs.
> 
> One message tone. Then another. And another. Absolute rapidfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been having lots of episodes of sleep paralysis this summer :(

It was easy.  Simple, really.  So you had an accidental run-in with Papyrus.  You said what you needed to say to placate him, and now all you had to do was avoid contact with him.  
  
Except that as soon as you got back to your apartment, you looked at your phone and realized you had 10 new messages from a number that wasn’t in your contacts, but at a glance, seemed to have their phone keyboard stuck on all-caps.  Your stomach twisted into a nervous knot.  
  
You knew who that was.  Of course.  Why did you ever think that wouldn’t happen?  You’d deleted him off your contact list, but he’d undoubtedly kept you on _his_.  
  
Either that, or he just dialed numbers consecutively until he found yours again.  
  
Not even an hour had passed, and it was already time to face the music for your actions.  
  
Still sitting in the driver’s seat of your car, you sighed heavily and tapped through to your texting app to check the most recent message.  
  
_THIS IS ALL SO EXCITING!  UNDYNE AND SANS (AND I OF COURSE!) HAVE ALREADY CONFIRMED.  METTATON SAID HE CAN’T GO BUT ALSO CALLED ME DARLING AND I ALMOST FAINTED.  STILL WAITING ON ALPHYS, TORIEL, AND ASGORE, BUT I’M SURE THEY’LL CONFIRM AS WELL.  SEE YOU IN A WEEK!  NYEHFULLY YOURS, PAPYRUS  
  
_ Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  Wait.  What?!  Papyrus, what did you _do_?!  You scrolled up frantically to see what led him to text you such a thing.  
  
_OH NO!  SORRY I TOOK SO LONG!  SANS WAS SLEEPING AND REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAD SUCCESSFULLY WOKEN HIM UP UNTIL I MENTIONED YOU!  
  
AND THEN HE SPENT FIVE MINUTES TRYING TO FIND HIS SECOND SLIPPER.  
  
AND THEN WE WENT OUTSIDE AND YOUR CAR WAS GONE.  
  
I UNDERSTAND!  CLEARLY YOU HAD TO GET HOME!  I COULD TELL YOU WERE IN A HURRY EVEN AS YOU WERE DRIVING ME BACK TO MY HOUSE.  
  
BUT FEAR NOT!!  NOW THAT WE ARE RE-INITIATING ALL OF THE FRIENDSHIPS, I WILL TAKE THE FIRST STEP AND GET US ALL TOGETHER FOR ONE BIG REUNION HANG-OUT!  BOY, I HOPE OUR OTHER FRIENDS REMEMBER YOUR NAME AFTER ALL THIS TIME.  
  
UPDATE: UNDYNE DOES!!! SO I THINK WE’RE IN THE CLEAR.  
  
DOES SATURDAY LITERALLY ALL DAY WORK FOR YOU?  
  
???  
  
WELL IT DOES NOW, BECAUSE I SET IT UP FOR SATURDAY ALL DAY RIGHT HERE WHERE SANS AND I LIVE!  
  
_ And now you were back to the original message.  
  
_THIS IS ALL SO EXCITING!  UNDYNE AND SANS (AND I OF COURSE!) HAVE ALREADY CONFIRMED.  METTATON SAID HE CAN’T GO BUT ALSO CALLED ME DARLING AND I ALMOST FAINTED.  STILL WAITING ON ALPHYS, TORIEL, AND ASGORE, BUT I’M SURE THEY’LL CONFIRM AS WELL.  SEE YOU IN A WEEK!  NYEHFULLY YOURS, PAPYRUS  
  
_ Oh, dear god.  Papyrus already told everyone that you were going to meet up with them, and it was too late to tell him not to do that.  As far as your original plans went, this was a disaster.  You didn’t know what you’d been expecting, but you were hoping that Papyrus would just let this go quietly.  Or that Sans would help cover for you, knowing that Papyrus had wrangled you into this.  
  
Ugh.  But he was Sans.  There was only so much you could expect of him before he returned to his usual spot on the sidelines, dropped the ball and let shit happen, as he clearly did here.  
  
You could always fake sick…  But the overarching damage had already been done.  If you dodged this meet-up, there would surely only be another to take its place.  _Then_ what would you do?  Keep faking sick until they wanted to hospitalize you for chronic illness?  


Ugh.  Why did you have to be so bad at telling people no?!  
  
You couldn’t deal with this tonight.  You were too tired.  Maybe when you woke up in the morning, you would have it in you to explain to Papyrus that you were sorry, but you’d moved on in your life.  (Even though you hadn’t.)  And that, as great as he was, you couldn’t see yourself being close friends with him anymore.  (Even though you could.)  And that he should be in the company of people who actually deserved him!  
  
…  No, no, then he would just aggressively try to instill some self-confidence and positive mental attitude in you.  
  
Ugh.  As you’d thought.  You couldn’t deal with this tonight.  It had been one hell of a day, packed with more action than you’d seen since you were in the underground.  
  
You left Papyrus on ‘read’ for now, tossed your phone to your pillow, collapsed on to your bed, and reached drowsily for your computer.  
  
It had been a long time since you’d felt so done with everything that you didn’t even have it in you to socialize with your online friends, but that was the case today.  You left a message in the group chat to let them know the situation.  
_  
DETERMINATOR: Crazy day.  As in more happened besides just school and work.  Might have the energy to talk about it tomorrow but heading to bed for now.  Sorry I couldn’t talk to yall tonight like I normally do :( Looking forward to talking to you guys tomorrow though!_  
  
You were going to go straight to bed, but you watched _Nikki is typing…_ turn to _3 people are typing…_ turn to _5 people are typing…_ , and you drowsily watched the messages of support come in, using your arm as a shitty, bony pillow.  
  
_Nikki: Aww okay, see you tomorrow buddy!  
  
John: Must have been one hell of a day.  I still remember that time you were IMing us from the hospital.  Nighters!_  
  
You, Nikki and John were three peas in a pod.  The part of your life before you knew them felt like a different life entirely from the one you lived now.  They were almost like childhood friends.  But not quite in the traditional sense.  
  
After all, you’d only ever communicated with them online.  You all lived thousands of miles away from one another.  But you were best friends all the same.  
  
_Amanda: Is John legit about the hospital thing?  
Amanda: Very curious about what happened, though.  Keep me updated.  
  
Amari: ruh roh.  you aren’t about to go full nomad and end up with your high school photos plastered all over the news again, are you? lol  
  
_ Amanda and Amari, you’d met online not long before your disappearance, but the bonds of shared fandom are stronger than any material known to man.  Your missing person pictures in the news were actually the first they ended up seeing of your face.  You’d bonded with them a lot more since returning to your life on the surface, and you certainly hoped to bond with them even more in weeks to come.  
  
_David: Hahahahaha pls don’t.  
David: CAN’T WAIT FOR TOMORROWWW.  GIVE US ALL THE DEETS.  
  
_ Your relationship with David was a marginally more interesting one.  You’d met in high school and been friends for a couple of years before he moved away.  You’d both moved several times since then, and you no longer had any idea where he lived, and he probably had no idea where you lived, either.  You pretty much had the same dynamic with him as you did with your other online friends.  In fact, he was on the same forum where you ended up meeting Amanda and Amari.  Sometimes, it was a little evident that, as much as you all enjoyed each other’s company, your clique was subtly self-divided into two subgroups: Nikki and John constituted one part, and David, Amanda, and Amari constituted the other.  
  
You linked the two together, an equal part of either side, or at least, that was how you felt.  And it seemed that, in your absence, they tended to isolate themselves into those two independent groups.  
  
Of course, after so much time spent in the underground resetting again and again, all of your friendships felt foreign to you when you returned to the surface, even the ones built over several years.  Many months had passed at this point, and they were only now starting to feel quite the same as before.  
  
You lay there, gazing listlessly at the open laptop in front of you, pondering if your life would ever be normal like that again.  You had a feeling it probably wouldn’t be.  
  
And with thoughts of friends old and new rattling around in your head, you fell into an uneasy sleep.  
  
Like most nights, you dreamed about macabre, bastardized images of the past.  Sharing Grillby’s with Sans atop a bell tower, your legs dangling over the edge, looking down thousands of feet below.  Toriel hugging you with arms of thorny vines, cutting into you until your blood ran red, and when it trickled on to her, she turned to dust and left you alone.  Paddling helplessly out in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight, until Undyne darted up from the water below you and pulled you under with a spear around your throat.  
  
Throwing yourself into battle against Sans atop a giant clockface, piecing his body with your knife as he pierced yours with bones and blasters, until you were both lying still, side by side, staring up at a sky churning nauseatingly with numbers, as the red flowed out of you and slowly left you lifeless.  
  
“why,” he pleaded, your name oozing from his mouth slowly and painfully like the blood from his dusting body.  “why did you make me do this?  why won’t you let me go?”  
  
You tried to say something, but all that came out was a wheeze that wanted to be a whisper.  You weren’t sure what you were going to say, anyways, only that your words were going to be poison.  You tried to move, but you couldn’t.  The more you struggled, the more you felt a crushing weight settle on to you.  Was Sans, in his last breath, holding you down with his magic just to torment you?  All you could do was lie there and breathe.  Wait for it to pass.  
  
Wait for your paralyzed body to die.  
  
And then you woke up with your heart pounding.    
  
Your episodes of sleep paralysis had gotten much, much worse after your time in the underground.  Probably because you were stressed all the time, and your nightmares turned your sleep schedule to chaos.  Stress and lack of sleep were common triggers for pretty much every ailment out there, right?  
  
For the nth time that week, you promised yourself that you would start falling asleep earlier, for your own good.  Maybe it would help the nightmares go away.  
  
Now that you were awake, you experimentally curled your fingers, then your arm.  It was silly, but you always liked to take a moment and appreciate the fact that you had conscious control over your body again, after you had episodes like that.  
  
The sound of incoming message alerts from your still-open laptop drew your attention away from your fascination with once again being able to move your limbs.  
  
One message tone.  Then another.  And another.  Absolute rapidfire.  
  
You felt dread in the pit of your stomach.  Something was happening.  What was it _now_?  Did you even dare to look?  Should you maybe, at least, just drag yourself to the bathroom, get yourself ready for the day before you got tossed into a whole ‘nother round of chaos?  
  
…  Fuck it.  Maybe it was just one of your friends freaking out about some announcement in their fandom.  Hopefully.  You didn’t know how much more change you could take in your life.  It was funny: you couldn’t deny, the monotony had been killing you before.  But to be thrown back into so much, all at once, was like a cold-shock.  For the same reason you shouldn’t toss a person experiencing heat stroke into an ice bath, you didn’t particularly enjoy so many things bombarding you, on all sides, all at once, after so much time spent in your sensory deprivation chamber of a life.  
  
Head still stuck in a sleepy fog and ringing with memories of your bizarre dreams, you checked your messages.  
  
_Nikki: Holy shit is this the crazy thing that happened last night? XD  
  
John: DT GET ON HERE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF YO  
  
_ DT, short for Determinator, was, of course, their nickname for you.  
  
_DETERMINATOR: What is it nowww  
  
_ One of them posted a link, followed by several exclamation points, and no other explanation.  Curious, you clicked on it.  
  
It opened to a video.  
  
You saw the park you’d been in the night before.  
  
You saw yourself from the back, marching angrily towards the confrontation between Papyrus and the harpy lady.  
  
Oh, for fuck’s sake.  You couldn’t catch a break, could you?  
  
You winced as you heard your voice, loud and clear, profanities streaming out in your anger.  If you’d known you were being recorded, you probably would have been a little more eloquent.  And not pushed her to the ground.  And not gotten involved at all.  
  
It wasn’t that there was any real truth to your excuse about wanting to stay out of monster politics.  You were dreading this not because of the publicity of it, but because you knew that with that publicity came the loss of that excuse.  With your anonymity and your hopes of keeping your head low now crushed, you no longer had a valid reason to keep acting like you didn’t know them.  
  
As far as they knew, you had absolutely no reason anymore to keep pushing them away.  
  
You were god damn friendship free real estate.  
  
Feeling sick to your stomach, you clicked through other postings of the same video clip.  It was one of those clips that people kept on reuploading and reposting, spreading it from site to site.  
  
It was today’s fresh new inspiring viral video.  
  
And not one headline missed out on the opportunity to recognize you and point out the coincidence of your identity.  
  
“Previous Missing Oregon Resident Makes Stunning Comeback Defending Skeleton Monster!”  
  
“You Won’t Believe Who Was Caught On Video Fighting Back Against Anti-Monster Bigot!”  
  
“From Missing Persons Case to White Knight: Oregon Resident Makes Waves Once More Defending Monster Ambassador…”  
  
_DETERMINATOR: fuuuuuck I didn’t think anyone was recording  
DETERMINATOR: uggggh why can’t the news just leave me the fuck alone  
  
Nikki: But that was so awesome what you did for that guy!  Everyone’s sharing it in support of you :-D well there are some nasty comments but just ignore them, you did awesome!  
  
John: Yeah!  Super proud of you!  Nobody would’ve blamed you for sitting that one out.  
John: I get it though.  It’s prob super stressful to get caught up in the public eye twice within the span of just a few months.  Hope they don’t pester you too much this time :(  
  
_ You had to take a moment, and take a deep breath.  Well…  at least there was that.  Now that you thought about it, this was the kind of thing that would probably pass in a matter of days.  Unless someone started a big Gofundme page for Papyrus, or something.  This wasn’t the kind of story they would be interested in stretching out over several days.  People would get bored of it too quickly, like they did as soon as they found out nothing terrible had happened to you while you were missing.  
  
It was one-day attention candy.  Something to fill the headlines.  A sweet, simple little story.  A glimpse into the world’s politics.  
  
You just wished you hadn’t gotten caught up in this.  
  
God, what had you been thinking, you asked yourself yet again.  Suddenly you weren’t feeling so good about your intervention anymore.  
  
You screwed up the only excuse you had.  And for what?  Was it really to protect Papyrus?  Now you were second-guessing yourself.  
  
Was it _really_ that you wanted to protect him?  Or did you crave that old feeling again?  The feeling of being influential?  Consequential?  More than a nobody.  The feeling of acting, setting an outcome into motion and making a difference.  ‘Making waves,’ as that one headline put it.  
  
Did you really care about protecting Papyrus?  Or did you just want to make a difference for a day or two?  Like you used to in the underground?  Like you never did anymore?  
  
Did it _really_ matter to you whether the change you made was favorable to Papyrus or not?  
  
Maybe you would have had just as much fun joining in on the harpy lady’s side.    
  
You’d felt so certain of your motives last night, but you weren’t anymore.  You didn’t know why you did what you did and not some other option.  Had your reset powers stripped you of a solid sense of moral codes and self?  You felt so… lost.  
  
_why did you make me do this?_  
  
You were sick.  You were a sick person if you even had to ask yourself why you helped your friend.  
  
_why won’t you let me go?  
  
_ They weren’t safe around you.  They would never be safe around you.  
  
You _had_ to tell Papyrus to cancel that hang out.  You should have told him that last night.  You _knew_ you weren’t going to go—no point in dragging it out needlessly.  
  
Abandoning your laptop, you scrambled to pick up your phone from where you’d left it on your pillow.  You had a number of texts—doubtless other people who saw your starring role circulating the internet—but you went straight to the text conversation with Papyrus.  
  
_I’m really sorry.  But do you see what’s happening now?  Someone recorded what happened and now I feel like the whole world’s watching and judging me,_ you typed out carefully.  
  
_This isn’t what I wanted.  I care about you all.  More than you’ll ever know.  But I can’t keep doing this.  I can’t be there on Saturday.  Or ever.  I’m sorry.  
  
Please just let me live in peace.  That way, you can, too.  
  
_ You felt like you should type more, but you couldn’t think of anything more to say.  You sent it as it was.  
  
Seconds later, you got a text back.  
  
_kinda late for that, dontcha think?  
  
_ …  _That_ didn’t look like Papyrus’ typing.  
  
_Hey Sans.  Kinda freaking out right now.  Why are you on your brother’s phone?  
  
_ The texting app said “PAPYRUS is typing…”  What bullshit.  
  
_he's setting up for the saturday party.  yeah, already.  he really wants to see ya.  
ok look.  
how far are you gonna take this whole keeping your head low thing  
cause from where i’m standing it looks like shit already hit the fan  
and like flung all over the room.  all over all the furniture  
you can’t unshit this room  
so you might as well sit in it…?  
  
_ You frowned down at your phone for a good minute, reading those texts as they came in.  
  
_…  You want me to sit in shit?  
  
kay look.  listen.  alright i write puns not analogies.  
what i’m tryin to say is if you were trying to keep yourself outta trouble you already failed miserably  
so why not turn shit into shit-onade and take the opportunity to come back and be our friend again  
  
_ Fuck.  You knew this was coming.  Especially from someone as astute as Sans. _  
  
You don’t understand.  I can’t be your friend right now.  It’s not just about protecting myself.  It’s about protecting you, too.  
  
starting to feel like you haven’t been totally honest with me about your reasoning here, pal, bc we’re usually on the same page but i don’t follow.  
  
_ Your face felt hot as a flame, your heart rate picking up at the terrifying realization that Sans might be on to you.  
  
_I’ve been honest with you.  
  
then you should have no problem showing up at the saturday shindig.  
here's what we’re gonna do  
  
_ He spent a good few minutes typing.  You didn’t interrupt him.  You didn’t know what you could possibly say to refute him.  
  
_i think you’re way too nervous over all this political stuff.  just don’t worry, alright?  of course it’s a bit of a bumpy ride, but it’s not all bad.  paps and the king n queen are all working hard to keep things peaceful, and it seems like it’s working, for the most part.  you can be friends with us all again, ‘cause we all really miss you.  just don’t throw yourself into any more situations like you did with paps.  as much as i respect what you did there (i watched the vid you told her off real good lol) it’s stuff like that that’ll put you in wayyyyy more of a mess than casually associating with us ever would.  and if anyone ever DOES come after you, we won’t let ‘em, ok?  
  
_ Holy shit.  You didn’t know Sans was capable of writing a text that long.  
  
_i’ll forgive u for ditching me and paps yesterday if u promise to show up on saturday.  
deal?  
  
_ Sigh.  
  
_paps is gonna cry again if you don’t.  
  
_ SIIIIIIIGH.  
  
_Okay.  
  
_ That was it.  You’d made it official.  You were going to be there.  If you didn’t show up, you’d just draw more attention to yourself.  Look like even more of an asshole. _  
  
k c u l8er sk8er.  
  
_ …  But you’d be lying if you said a part of you—a small, small, selfish part of you—wasn’t ecstatic at the thought of being surrounded by those familiar monster faces again.  
  
You really hoped you weren’t going to regret this.  
  
(You were.)


	4. Horse In A Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “… Hi, Sans.”
> 
> “heya, cactus.”
> 
> “… You’re not actually going to start calling me that, are you?”
> 
> “welp. it was a one-off joke until you said that. now i dunno. i might do it just to torment you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been to stage two.
> 
> Never go past stage two.

You stared at yourself in the mirror.  You looked a mess.  
  
Well, good.  
  
That was what you were going for.  
  
You were aware that your dedication to pushing your former friends away was bordering on an obsession at this point.  Bordering on utter ridiculousness, in fact.  How hard could it be to just… _not_ lash out, lose your shit and end up killing people?  Most of the world’s population did that every single day!  
  
But it wasn’t completely about that, and you knew it.  It was also about not deserving them, and feeling dishonest by letting them continue on thinking that you were as perfect as they seemed to think you were.  In this timeline, to them, you were their savior.  The angel of the underground, as Sans’ statement still rang in your head.  How could you go on, letting them love someone with a soul as poisoned as yours?  
  
You could try to tell them the truth.  But that was a _lot_ of people to tell, and it was a _lot_ to tell all of them, and hell, how many of them would actually believe it?  And how could you possibly let them know without making yourself sound like a total psycho?  
  
Maybe you couldn’t.  Because you _were_ a total psycho.  
  
Anyways, you did a lot of thinking in the week leading up to the party, and you came up with a new approach.  
  
The main goal was _still_ to get them to leave you alone.  
  
But the problem now was that they wanted to be your friends again, so much that they were getting in the way of that, even though it was for their own good, right?  
  
So how could you remedy the situation?  
  
Obviously, all you had to do was make them all not want to be your friends anymore.  
  
In summary, your plan was to show up, be insufferable, get shitfaced and make a complete ass of yourself at the get-together.  
  
That was why you were currently wearing the least flattering outfit in your wardrobe.  All the clothes you wore once, looked in the mirror, and were too embarrassed to wear ever again now either clung to, or hung from, your body.  Ill-fitting.  Unflattering.  Unstylish.  
  
Papyrus had mentioned that Mettaton couldn’t make it to the party, but if he could, you were pretty sure this would be sufficient to at least lose _his_ desire for a rekindled friendship with you on the spot.  You didn’t think the others would be that shallow, but still.  It was a nice touch.  It showed that you didn’t give a crap about being there.  
  
Even though you did.  
  
You did so much that your heart was pounding in your chest almost to the point of a full-blown panic attack, and you felt like you might puke up your breakfast when you thought about seeing Sans in person again, after that big, dramatic goodbye.  Texting him was one thing.  Seeing him was another.  And it was different from seeing Papyrus in person, too, because you hadn’t been _expecting_ that.  It just _happened_ to you, and you didn’t have time to worry about it.  
  
The funny thing was, you didn’t even know what you were so nervous about that it was making your stomach churn.  Embarrassing yourself?  That was the entire point.    
  
Welp.  In any case.  It was go time.  Time to do or die.  
  
The whole drive there, you felt like even the people in the other cars were somehow gazing in and judging your fashion choices.  You didn’t just look like a hobo.  You looked like a hobo with no standards.  And you kind of smelled like one, too, having pulled the clothes out of the way back of your dresser, where they’d been sitting undisturbed for an amount of time you couldn’t even guess at.  
  
You were hyper-aware of this, especially as you stood at the door to Sans and Papyrus’ house and suddenly found yourself blushing in embarrassment.  This could end up being just as painful for you as it was for all of them.  You’d apologize personally for everything you were about to do, but that would defeat the purpose.  
  
Sans answered the door.  Oh dear god.  
  
“hey there, uh…”  His pupils flicked up to your face.  Down to your toes.  Up to your face again.  There was a flash of nervousness in his easygoing smile as he said your name, long and stretched out in uncertainty.  “nice threads.  knocking ‘em dead right off the bat on your big return trip, huh?”  But the nervousness faded.   He looked—oh no—genuinely happy to see you.  “i’m glad you came.”  
  
“Hi Sans.  You got food and drinks up in this bitch?”  
  
He was supposed to be, like any normal person would be, offended.   But instead, he smiled in a way that made his nose wrinkle cutely.  Was he…  stifling a laugh?  
  
“uh.  would it be the skelebros house without it?  we’ve got all the spaghetti you could ever need.”  
  
“Cool.  I’m hungry.”  As much as it pained you to do this, you brushed past him.  
  
But he grabbed your hand and gently pulled you back.  
  
“well golly gee willickers, thanks, old pal.  i missed you, too.”  You pulled your hand away, and he didn’t stop you.  “look, i understand wanting to get to the point and grab some grub, but…”  He held out his arms instead.  “and i can’t believe this is coming from me.  but have some manners, would ya?  i thought i’d never seeya again.  humor me.”  
  
You tilted your head at him.  It took you a moment to realize that he was holding his arms out not as a gesture of exasperation, but as an offer for a hug.  
  
Like back on the mountainside.  
  
Like back in the judgement hall…  
  
You froze up.  
  
“…  kay.  or leave me hangin’.  that’s fine too.”  
  
“AHEM AHEM!” Now Papyrus was here to judge your life choices.  He marched up to the two of you with his hands on his hips like a disappointed parent.  “THAT IS NOT FINE TOO.  HUMAN, HUG MY BROTHER.  UNLESS HE SMELLS.  ACTUALLY LET ME CHECK.”  
  
He leaned down to sniff Sans, who leaned away from him and held up his hands defensively.  
  
“HM!  I CAN CONFIRM HE DOESN’T SMELL.  IN WHICH CASE.  YOU HAVE NO REASON NOT TO HUG HIM!”  
  
“uh.  paps.  don’t make this weird,” Sans came to your defense.  “pretty sure a forced hug is worse than no hug at all.”  
  
“OH, PLEASE!  THEY WANT TO HUG YOU!  THEY’RE JUST BEING WHAT I BELIEVE IS CALLED, A TSUNDERE!  A PRICKLY CACTUS OF EMOTION!”  He clapped each of you on the back, pushing you together into the clumsiest, most awkward of absolutely forced hugs.  “HUG THE CACTUS!”  
  
Oh, god.  This was going terribly, but not the kind of terribly you’d been hoping for.  You stood stiffly and uncomfortably, like a mannequin, even as he slowly started to loosen up and sink gratefully into you arms.  
  
“…  Hi, Sans.”  
  
“heya, cactus.”  
  
“…  You’re not actually going to start calling me that, are you?”  
  
“welp.  it was a one-off joke until you said that.  now i dunno.  i might do it just to torment you.”  
  
You patted each other on the back.  A great moment to pull away from each other and end the awkwardness!  
  
…  But neither of you did.  And when you closed your eyes, it felt like you were right back on that mountainside and no time had passed at all.  
  
Wasn’t that the kind of thing you were supposed to feel with special, close friends?  Like you could disappear from each other’s lives for months, then pick up where you left off like nothing ever happened the next time you saw each other?  
  
“NYEHHH!  YOU TWO ARE JUST SO CUTE!  PAPYRUS INCOMING!”  
  
The next thing you knew, you were being crushed between two skeletons.  It was at that point that you had enough of this.  You put one hand on each of their chests, pushed them away until you had a bit of wiggle room, and wormed your way out of it.  
  
“Okay, that’s…  that’s enough of that,” you stuttered.  Damn it.  The crap-outfit wasn’t working at all!  You’d been here for two minutes and probably spent one-and-a-half of them getting hugged.  You had to kick your insufferable act into gear.  “Where’s the booze at, my boys?”  
  
Papyrus was standing up straight with a big grin as if he hadn’t even noticed your obvious snub, whereas Sans was dusting himself off in a gesture of exaggerated offense.  
  
“uh.  is.  everything alright, kid?”  
  
“Awesome.”  You pulled open one cupboard.  Then another.  Without closing the first one.  “It’s just not a party until someone gets smashed, you know?”  
  
“OH…  IT ISN’T?”  Papyrus’ smile fell a bit.  “…  HM.  WELL, I REALLY SHOULD THROW A PROPER PARTY.  HOW ABOUT I ‘GET SMASHED?’  IF THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY.”  
  
“how about you don’t.”  Sans leaned on the counter and watched you continue to raid the kitchen.  “paps and i don’t really drink.  undyne’s probably gonna bring some.  dunno if it’ll be enough to get, uh, _smashed_ , though.”  
  
“It will be if I swipe the bottle and drink the whole thing!” you flashed him a playful smile.  
  
He flashed you back a nervous one.  
  
“…  uh…”  
  
“Trust me, guys.  I do this all the time.”  
  
Perfect.  Now they thought you were an alcoholic.  Nobody wants to be friends with an alcoholic, right?  
  
“OKAY… BUT WHAT IF…  WE SHOWED YOU THAT YOU CAN HAVE FUN WITHOUT OVERINDULGING IN SOMETHING SO HARMFUL…?”  
  
“yeah.  y’know, when i’m having a hard time, i usually stress eat.”  
  
“SANS, THAT’S NOT HEALTHY EITHER!”  
  
“it’s healthier than alcohol, bro.”  
  
…  Unless, of course, they become dead set on helping you through your issues.  You know, as real friends do.  
  
A knock at the door saved you from the inevitable well-intentioned intervention, and from there, over the course of the next hour or so, everyone else who had been invited filtered in one by one—with the exception, of course, of the first guests, Undyne and Alphys, who arrived together.  
  
It was nice to see that they were still happily a thing, even though you’d never expected any different.  You were glad to see that they hadn’t changed a bit, either in terms of their relationship or individually.  The first thing Undyne did was hug you until you felt like you couldn’t breathe and give you a noogie so aggressive you thought she was going to scalp you.  And the first thing Alphys did was stand back out of hugging range, knock her knuckles together, and softly mention that you had a whole lot of anime recommendations to catch up on together.  
  
Toriel and Asgore had changed a bit, on the other hand, but only in terms of the dynamic between them.  Before, it had seemed openly hostile (at least on Toriel’s side—it was sad, but Asgore still seemed to love her very much) but now you got more of a begrudging, tense friendship vibe from them.  
  
You didn’t blame Toriel.  He _did_ kill several of the people she considered to be her children.  What kind of mom could forgive someone that, no matter what the justification?  
  
But then, you didn’t blame Asgore, either.  He operated on a rule of serving the greater good.  Every kill was justified.  Every kill served a purpose, bringing all of monsterkind closer to the freedom they were finally tasting today.  It was a cold hard fact that if Asgore hadn’t gathered the other six human souls by the time you came, you alone wouldn’t have been able to free the underground.  He was a murderer several times over, but all in the name of what could ultimately be called good.  You couldn’t say the same for yourself.  
  
Soon, you were sitting in the living room alongside the very same monsters you’d been standing alongside when you first looked out at the world from atop Mt. Ebott.  And they were all trying to act like you weren’t the odd one out, like you hadn’t been completely absent for a huge period of time where they all kept in constant contact with one another.  
  
But it couldn’t help but make itself obvious.  There were periods of either excluding you from conversations you didn’t have enough background information to keep up with, or bombarding you with the simplest questions about the part of your life they’d missed out on.  Papyrus was the greatest offender of the latter case.  You got the feeling that he was trying to make you feel included.  But you’d distanced yourself from them so much he was struggling to find significant topics to ask about.  
  
And of course, you weren’t helping by giving your brusque, evasive, and sometimes rude answers.  
  
Alphys tried to engage you in nerdy talk about anime and video games, but you stubbornly told her you hadn’t seen or played anything she mentioned, even though you had.  
  
Undyne asked what you were up to lately, a general question that often yielded a detailed answer.  But you nipped it in the bud by saying, “School.  Work.  That’s all.”  
  
Toriel picked up by asking how those things were going.  You just said, “Fine.”  
  
Asgore asked if you’d like some tea.  And now that you were totally set on selling the “obnoxious asshole only here for the munchies and booze” trope, you told him you didn’t drink that crap, even though you did and you were rather fond of it.  
  
Sans didn’t say anything to you.  Sometimes he seemed to be downright ignoring you, though you thought that was what he was doing when he went over to the kitchen, until you noticed him staring at you attentively with a bottle of ketchup in his hand.  Maybe he was just listening to you.  Still, it was strange for him not to sprinkle in his input here or there, or even crack a couple of jokes.  
  
Everybody was trying to act normal, but they were all ever so slightly offset, like there was a constant elephant in the room they were trying not to address.  An alcoholic asshole elephant in glaringly ugly clothes.  
  
If you were trying to bring down the mood of this party (which you were), you were doing an excellent job of it.  
  
And you were about to do an even more excellent job of it, because in the awkward atmosphere you had created, Undyne decided it was a good time to break out the booze that Sans had accurately predicted she would bring along.  A tall bottle of spiced rum.  70 proof.  
  
The moment that came out, even before the first ounce was poured, the tension eased considerably.  
  
“Oh, I really should not,” Toriel laughed, paw held daintily over her lips.  “I think we all remember what happened last time.  Do we not, Sans?”  
  
He was still over in the kitchen, leaning his elbows on the counter, but he didn’t miss a beat once someone directly addressed him.  His grin grew a bit into something less neutral and more genuine, and he winked.  “i’d like to see you try.  my pizza lunchables are in the back of the fridge and under tight guard.  why do you think i’m standing over here?”  
  
If you were honest, you thought it was because your plan was working and he wanted to get away from you and the awkward atmosphere you were creating.  You wanted to know what happened involving Toriel, Sans, alcohol and Lunchables.  
  
Jesus, when you put them together like that, you _really_ wanted to know.  
  
But before you could ask, Undyne poured you a shot until the shotglass overflowed, and shoved it into your hands.  
  
“Here!  I think we can all agree that YOU need this the most out of anyone!  Loosen up!  Release the stick jammed up your butthole!”  
  
“UNDYNE!  RUDE!  VULGAR!”  
  
“FUHUHUHU!”  
  
“ALSO!  ALCOHOL IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO EVERYTHING!”  
  
“well, actually, scientifically, alcohol is—”  
  
“ENOUGH, SANS, WE’VE HEARD THAT ONE A MILLION TIMES.  YOU MENTION IT EVERY TIME YOU ARE AROUND SOMEONE WHO IS DRINKING THE VILE STUFF.  WE HAVE ALL HEARD IT.”  
  
“our human friend hasn’t.”  
  
“THEY ARE A SCIENTIST.  OF COURSE THEY KNOW ALCOHOL IS A SOLUTION.  SCIENTIFICALLY.  NOT IN TERMS OF LIFE ADVICE.”  
  
You just sat there, booze in hand, letting them go back and forth for awhile.  Then, slowly, as they were still conversing with each other, you drank the rum.  
  
You felt nervous already, and it burned as it went down.  It had a strong, unpleasant taste, one that made your face want to scrunch up.  This wasn’t your first time drinking alcohol, but you preferred mixed drinks and things with lower alcohol content.  
  
You poured yourself another shot.  
  
“Whoa there!” Undyne slapped you on the back.   “At least let the first one settle for a bit first!  I dunno how much of a lightweight you are.”  
  
“I’m not one at all,” you reassured her, even though you really didn’t know.  
  
And after throwing back that next shot of rum and a couple more (before Sans completely confiscated your glass), it turned out you were wrong.  
  
Because of the nature of alcohol, you were on your third shot before you even started feeling the effects of the first one.  You felt kind of calm, spaced out and sedated.  You’d had to take Xanax for anxiety before, and it felt just like that.  That was stage one.  
  
A little while after that, you started to feel dizzy.  Stage two.  You still felt fairly there, but you worried that if you got off the couch to your feet, you might not be able to walk quite right.  
  
Stage three, you didn’t know what the _fuck_ you were doing anymore.  
  
You’d been hoping all night to get to stage three, because stage three was the part where you could live with yourself doing things that would get you kicked out of this little friend group forever.  It was the part where all that was left in your mind was the vague idea of BE BAD.  
  
For example, you tried to punch the first person you saw.  Unfortunately, that person was Undyne, and you couldn’t hit for shit right now.  Your ‘aggressive’ blow deflected off her arm muscles like nothing, and she thought you were trying to give her a friendly nudge, so she gave you one back that knocked you on your ass.  
  
Next, you challenged Toriel to a game of frisbee, which was the last thing you would be capable of doing in your condition, and she knew it.   She tried to get you to lie down, but you kept calling her ‘mom’ until she agreed to your request just to placate you.  Then you tried to take one of the ceramic dinner plates down from the cabinet to use as a frisbee and ended up toppling a whole stack of them, sending them crashing to the counter and shattering into dozens of irreparable shards.  
  
Everyone looked over with wide eyes when that happened, except Sans and Papyrus, who seemed fairly unimpressed.  
  
“not as bad as what papyrus did to our window last week,” Sans remarked casually.  
  
“NYEH-HEH-HEH!  YEAH!  NOT AS BAD AS _THAT_!”  
  
The next thing you did was probably the one that got you closest to getting kicked out that night.  
  
You started trying to kiss everyone who got within two feet of you.  
  
You stood in the corner.  Like a _spider_.  That was how spiders did it, right?  You didn’t have a web, but still.  All you had to do was wait for someone to walk into your trap…  
  
“U-um.  Hey.  A-are you okay?  I-I understand if you get nervous at parties…  m-me too, eheheh!”  
  
Alphys, who was tragically sober, made the mistake of approaching you first to check on you.  
  
Was trying to kiss a happily and obviously taken girl sufficient to get you kicked out of this party?  You hoped so, because you went for it.  
  
Of all the people in the world who didn’t know how to deal with this, Alphys was probably the one who knew how to deal with it the least.  She squealed, tried to push you away, and the first words out her mouth were, of course, “Undyne, h-help!”  
  
Undyne?  
  
Undyne.  
  
Oh, fuck.  
  
“Whoa whoa WHOA WHOA HEY!  WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!”  Undyne grabbed her small, trembling girlfriend away from you, and you were sure if her arms weren’t so occupied shielding the embarrassed little lizard monster, they would be punching the shit out of you.  
  
Hey!  A fight!  Just like you wanted!  
  
You must have had some sort of mad, Joker-like grin on your face as you jumped up, arms outstretched, and tried to kiss her, too.  
  
She put a hand in your face, and you ended up on your ass again.  
  
“I’m gonna kick your ass, you little turd!”  
  
Oh yes! A fight!  You were gonna beat up Undyne and _everyone_ was gonna hate you!  All you had to do was get to your feet.  
  
But for some reason, when you tried to get to your feet, you tipped over and ended up on your side on the floor, instead…?  You felt like a beached whale, arms flopping uselessly like flippers.  
  
“okay.  that’s enough of that.  undyne, take alphys outside and calm her down. don’t worry, i’ve got em.”  
  
Black basketball shorts with a white stripe down the side.  The smell of ketchup and pine trees.  You pieced together in seconds what your un-inebriated mind would’ve been able to put together in milliseconds.  Sans had knelt at your side.  
  
“heya, cactus.”  
  
You whined, lying still on your side without trying to get up anymore.  You probably could, if you tried, nice and slow, without Undyne looming over you threatening to punch your lights out, but you needed a moment.    
  
“Cactus?  What the fuuuck?”    
  
“well, calling you ‘kid’ feels weird when i know you’re about my age, even if you don’t act like it.”  
  
“…  Wha _zzat_ supposed to mean?!”  
  
“means you’re all cool and mature, obviously.  you’ve got a job and everything.  working on a phd.  drinking booze at parties.  i’m pretty much an eternal five-year-old, myself.  i can hardly stomach the stuff if i try.  and farts are hilarious.”  
  
You giggled.  And you didn’t stop.  You had a whole, entire giggle fit, and managed to throw one of your arms up and over his shoulder.  
  
“Holy shit, dude…  you’re so right…  farts _are_ hilarious…”  
  
“…  yeah.  and you know what else is great?  naps.”  
  
“…  Yeah…  naps…”  
  
“and you’ve got a couch with your name on it.  undyne’s outside with alphys, i haven’t seen asgore run like that since tori gave him the stink-eye out top mount ebott, tori’s in the backyard contemplating her life choices, and paps went out to get some stuff you’re gonna need in the morning.”  
  
You blinked up at him, eyes slowly focusing on his face, expression undoubtedly confused.  
  
“…  A lawyer?”  
  
Sans snorted and hunched over like your words had caused a physical impact.  He let out a peal of giggles much higher pitched than you ever would’ve expected.  Like—were you the only one hearing this right now?!  Who would’ve thought Sans Hot-Fudge-Voice Gaster could giggle like that?  
  
It was surprisingly endearing.  
  
“ahhh.  joke of the day,” he remarked once he’d calmed down.  “alright, john mulaney.  up and at ‘em.”  
  
With Sans’ help, you got to your feet.  You were pretty sure you could walk without him helping you like this, but you let him do it anyways, just in case you were wrong.  At this moment, you had every reason to trust his judgement more than your own.  You were surprised how unhindered he was by you leaning so much of your weight against his small frame.  
  
“John Mulaney…” you belched like a man with a beer belly in his forties who didn’t give a fuck, “John Mulaney is a funny…  funny guy…”  
  
“he sure is.  y’know he’s got a show on netflix.  you wanna watch it together?”  
  
“I’M A _HHHORSE_!  IN A _HHHOSPITAL_!”  You made sure you really emphasized those H words, just like John Mulaney did in his act.  
  
“… i’m gonna take that as a yes.”  
  
It took a minute to get you to untangle yourself from him, especially because every time he tried to disengage, you grabbed on to him again in fear of falling down.   Eventually, though, he managed to get you to let yourself _gently_ fall on to the couch cushions.  
  
Everything was a bit of a blur.  He patted you on the shoulder, stepped back and looked at you with his hands held out like he was worried you might fall on the floor and shatter the moment he let go, then, slowly, backed away from you and left the room.  
  
Well, GOOD.  He was finally getting wise and leaving you alone!  Forever!  Buh-bye, Sans.  Buh-bye, monsters.  Enjoy your somewhat more drama-free lives now.  
  
…  Except he came back with a blanket and a remote, tucked you in, and turned on John Mulaney’s comedy act on Netflix for you.  
  
You couldn’t take this anymore.  Couldn’t take the guilt.  After everything you’d done to hurt him…  to hurt all of them.  How was it right that he was still at your side, wasting his time on you?  You tried to push his hands away.  
  
“hey, easy.  just tryin’ to get you comfy here.”  
  
“Why do you even bother?”  Your mind was foggy.  Your lips were loose.  “I’m not worth it.  I’ll never be worth it.  No matter how hard I try.”  
  
He looked down at you, silent.  You looked up at him, misty-eyed.  
  
“…  There’s no point in trying, huh?” you asked, voice soft and raspy.  “I could live a bazillion lives…  die a bazillion deaths…  and never be worth a moment of your guys’ time.”  
  
He didn’t respond to your sorrowful words.  He didn’t say a thing.  He went about his business making you comfortable in complete silence.  You could tell he wasn’t expecting useful or coherent responses from you, so he didn’t see the point in trying to talk to you.  He ended up sitting on the arm rest of the couch down by your feet, phone in hand, glancing over at you every once in a while.  
  
After about ten minutes, he got up, pulled your blanket down, mumbled apologies when you whined about being cold, and started positioning you limb by limb.  One arm outstretched.  One hand under your chin.  One leg extended, one bent and crossed over the other.  In the process of doing so, he’d set his phone down by your head, and you dazedly read the words you saw there in the google search bar.  
  
‘how to take care of your drunk friend.’  
  
Ha.  
  
Hahaha.  
  
_Friend_.  
  
You and Sans were still friends.  
  
He must be out of his mind.  
  
You drifted off to sleep in the middle of Sans tucking you under the blanket again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't know what happened involving Sans, Toriel, alcohol and lunchables, then I can only assume you weren't around for the Undertale first anniversary event on Tumblr, and I think that's a tragedy.
> 
> https://undertaleqa.tumblr.com/post/150441869728/papyrus-whats-your-favourite-food#notes
> 
> Also you are now all authorized to call the reader character "cactus" lmao


	5. A Horse of a Hangover and an Offer You Can't Refuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “’morning, sunshine.”
> 
> You spit into the bowl and wiped your lips with toilet paper. A few seconds of silence passed—you had to make sure your stomach was done ejecting its contents, at least for the moment, before you responded to him.
> 
> “Fuck you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DONT HAVE TIME TO EDIT THIS I GTG I SORRY

To have a night of sleep without dreams—at least, without dreams you remembered in the moment you woke up in the morning—was merciful nowadays.  Any day you woke up in the morning without thoughts—no, memories of genocide pounding in your head like a migraine, was a good day.  
  
Except this one, in which you woke up with the powerful urge to vomit.  
  
You lurched off the couch, hand over your mouth, and made a dash out into the hall.  
  
Recognizing the layout of the house, you were able to locate the bathroom just in time to fling the door open, dash to the toilet, throw the lid against the back so quickly you were sure the impact would wake everyone in the neighborhood, and vomit at a level that could be described as no less than “profusely.”  
  
Well.  It was better that this was happening now than in your sleep.  It was nice of Sans to put you in the recovery position, which you were now finally sober enough to realize he’d done.  
  
Ugh.  Your head was pounding.  You couldn’t even _think_ right now, your whole body felt so poisoned.  It took you a minute of laying your head against the toilet seat to even realize that the nauseating, acrid stench in your nose that was bringing you dangerously close to spewing all over again was because you didn’t flush.  So you did, and watched the water swirl down the drain.  It was kind of hypnotizing.  Kind of relaxing.  
  
You gagged so hard the noise that came out barely even sounded human.  And you vomited again.  
  
Those horrible, demon-like noises your vocal chords were forming pretty much of their own volition must have covered up the sound of approaching footsteps.  Either that, or Sans did what he does best and teleported into the bathroom to check on you.  Either way, the first thing that alerted you to his presence was his gentle hands scooping up the hair from around your neck and holding it back in a ponytail.  
  
“’morning, sunshine.”  
  
You spit into the bowl and wiped your lips with toilet paper.  A few seconds of silence passed—you had to make sure your stomach was done ejecting its contents, at least for the moment, before you responded to him.  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“careful.  i’ve gotcha by the hair right now.  if you’re too much of a jerk, i might just dunk your head in the shitter.”  
  
You sighed, shutting your eyes.  The only thing that even marginally relieved the feeling of your hangover was puking into the toilet, and even that only made you feel better for a matter of minutes.  
  
“Yeah, now that you mention it, I kind of feel like a cat being held by the scruff of its neck.”  
  
“’course.  gotta make sure you don’t turn around and start clawing the shit outta me.”  He leaned over you a little, apparently just so that you could see the teasing smirk on his face.  “or throwing yourself at me like you did with the ladies last night.”  
  
“Ugh.”  You put a hand directly in his face and shoved him back behind you.  
  
“heheheheh.  what were you even trying to accomplish?”  
  
You flushed the toilet again, using the auditory interruption as an excuse to take a moment and think of a response.  
  
“A kiss, obviously.”  
  
“nah.”  
  
You still felt so sick you probably shouldn’t have dared turn away from the toilet bowl, but you did, just to look over your shoulder at him.  
  
“What do you mean _nah_?  I’m a lonely person.  I was smashed.  What do you expect?”  
  
“that wasn’t you.  not really.  you were acting out about something.  all last night, you were acting out about something.  that wasn’t the you i know.”  
  
You hated to sound cliché, but it slipped out before you knew your lips were forming the words: “You don’t know me.”  
  
He seemed to realize how dorky that sounded, too, because he snorted at you like you were joking.  “okay, misfit-teenager-boutta-get-a-regrettable-haircut.”  
  
“I don’t like you saying that while you’re holding a huge clump of my hair in your hand.”  
  
Sans smiled at you, just as teasingly as before, formed a V shape with the fingers of his unoccupied hand where you could see it, then clamped your hair between them in an imitation cutting motion.  
  
“snip snip.”  
  
“You are one step closer to me turning around and clawing the shit out of you.”  
  
“and you’re one step closer to getting dunked.”  
  
Just when you thought you had evaded an uncomfortable conversation, though, he continued, his tone firm.  
  
“seriously, though.  you wanna talk about what’s going on?”  And before you could even say _no_ , he started theorizing.  “i know it’s gotta be hard being in the spotlight so much.  you just want life to go back to normal, right?  and while i don’t think abandoning all your old friends was the right way to go about that, i can see the kinda drama you’ve been pulled into ‘cause of us.  uh.  and papyrus.  the other day.”  He paused, though he didn’t seem to be done talking.  “i really respect what you did.  even if i know he coulda’ handled it himself.  but anyways.  i get the distinct feeling…  well.  i get the distinct feeling this isn’t really about the publicity issue.”  
  
You didn’t know how to respond to that.  He was right, as always.  But you didn’t know how to explain yourself.  So you just said, with a hint of cynicism, “Do you now?”  
  
“yep.  you were a jerk last night.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“but it was on purpose, wasn’t it?”  
  
You didn’t respond.  You were starting to feel sick again, though you couldn’t say whether from nerves or the hangover, so you leaned over the toilet bowl again.  
  
“yeah, i thought so.  and i think i know what this is about.  ‘cause you said something to me last night.  dunno if you remember.”  
  
Fuck.  What did you say.  What did your asshole idiot drunken brain make you say?  
  
“something about not being worth our time no matter how hard you try.  sounded like you were really down on yourself.  and i guess…  heck.  i guess things were so hectic in the underground, i never really noticed that you had self-image issues like that.”  
  
…  _That_ was what he thought you were acting out over?  How lucky did you have to be to dodge Sans’ innate lie detector ability?  
  
“but you gotta realize that you’re only hurting yourself and everyone who cares about you by trying to drive us away like this.  if you need a little space, fine.  if you don’t wanna throw your heart and soul into being our angel of the underground, you don’t _have_ to.  
  
“but you need us around.  to remind you that you’re cared for and worth it.  and we need you, too.”  
  
He was so far off the mark as to your reasoning, and yet, something about what he said got to you.  Your eyes became misty.  
  
“…  You don’t need me.  You’ve been doing just fine without me,” you insisted quietly.  
  
“nope.”  Sans scrolled through his phone, and it seemed for a moment like he was just being extremely dismissive of your feelings, but then he remarked, “i’ve got a bunch of text conversation history that says otherwise.”  
  
“…  I thought you guys tried not to talk about me anymore.”  
  
“key word: tried.  you still came up a lot.  as did the topic of trying to get in contact with you.  for the record,” he glanced at you, expression neutral, “i was the strongest advocate of leaving you alone.”  
  
Of course.  He’d promised.  Sans didn’t like breaking promises.  
  
“but everyone missed you.  which kinda implies that everyone cares about you.  and you know what?  you deserve it, whether you think so or not.  you freed us all.  and don’t you think it might be…  i dunno, some kinda _sign_ , the fact that you finally came back to us because you decided to do papyrus a solid and fight off some soccer mom in desperate need of a friggin’ snickers bar?”  
  
“Why?” you challenged, “Do you?”  
  
“maybe.”  He patted your shoulder reassuringly, and without warning, you felt your hair drop and settle back down on your shoulders as he released it.  “sit tight.  i think i’m chubby enough that it’ll cancel out how much taller than me you are, and my clothes might fit you.”  
  
Despite everything, you smiled.   “I’m sure it’ll look better than what I’m wearing right now.”  
  
“i figured that was on purpose too.  but for the record.  you still look nice.”  
  
He ruffled your hair, and then he was gone, leaving you to rest your cheek on that nasty but pleasantly cool porcelain and contemplate.  
  
Somehow, despite misunderstanding the situation, Sans had still managed to make a valid point.  You _were_ just hurting yourself and the monsters you were trying so hard to care about with your shenanigans.  You could see that, more and more as you went further and further into this hole you were digging.  Maybe you were being ridiculous.  
  
Maybe you should get out of this hole while you still could.  
  
Was it really that reprehensible just to stay in their lives?  Maybe not.  Sans mentioned something that made the gears start turning in your head—space.  Maybe that was what  you needed to do.  
  
Don’t push them away.  
  
But don’t let them in, either.  
  
Let them be your friends, but not close ones.  Not ones that you would feel too awfully betrayed by, if you found out that they’d lied to you.  Casual friends.  You could do that, right?  Seeing as how avoiding them and pushing them away had proven useless, it seemed to be your only option left.  
  
It left you feeling a little guilty, but you knew it wasn’t the worst thing you could do.  
  
By the time Sans came back in, you’d made up your mind to start being nicer to the monsters.  Starting with him.  
  
“Thanks.”  He’d brought you a plain white T-shirt, navy blue basketball shorts, and a galaxy hoodie.  
  
“don’t mention it.”  
  
“I like the jacket.”  
  
“yeah, me too.  i’d say you can keep it.  but nah.  it’s mine.”  
  
“Gentlemanly as ever, Sans.”  You took a deep breath in, and let it out.  “Okay.  So.  Yeah.  I was acting out.”  
  
He nodded thoughtfully, as if in confirmation that, yeah, he knew, he didn’t even need you to confirm it to feel certain of it.  
  
“I guess I just thought you’d all be better off without me.  But I was wrong.”  Or maybe you weren’t, but there was nothing you could do about it.  “I’m sorry.”  
  
“awwwh.  you don’t have to apologize to _me_.”  He sat up on the counter, while you kept your spot by the toilet.  “you have to apologize to everyone else.”  
  
“I knowww.  I will.”  
  
“but if you’re really sorry, you could go to grillb’z with me later to make it up to me, like i was kinda hoping we could after we were done with our metaphorical ‘reunited and it feels so good’ montage.”  
  
You giggled softly.  “Dear god.  What would that montage look like now?”  
  
“us hugging.  then cut straight to me hauling your drunk ass to the couch.”  
  
You laughed at each other—you, at his comment, and him, probably, at how dumb and reckless you’d been.  
  
And then you were both strangely, comfortably silent.  
  
“…  c’mon, buddy.”  
  
_do you remember me?_  
  
“let’s forget all this—”  
  
_just lay down your weapon, and…_  
  
“—and just go to grillby’s.  like old times.  whaddya say?”  
  
It took you a moment to erase the vivid memories from your thoughts.  
  
You’d made up your mind.  
  
Casual friendship was the only way everyone could win.  
  
Be there for him.  Be kind to him.  Do what he wanted you to do.  Be the person he wanted and needed you to be.  Not just him, either—do that for all of them.  
  
Just don’t get too close.  This was for them, not yourself.  You had to keep telling yourself that.  This was for them.  
  
Don’t get too close.  
  
“…  Okay.”


End file.
